My husband abuses me but I don't want our children to ever know

At 22, I married a dreadful man and got out after four years. Then I fell in love with a good man for two years and had a nervous breakdown when we split.

Then (off work), I met the elder brother of a girl I knew in a pub. Andrew told me he loved me as soon as he saw me.

He’d been married before but his wife had an affair and left him. Andrew was devastated, moved to Nigeria and ended up living with a prostitute.

The night we met he told me he’d got over his wife but didn’t mention the girl.

He told me he loved me on the Friday and when we went for a meal the following Tuesday he asked me to marry him.

I didn’t say yes that time and he went back to Nigeria.

He paid the girl off (I found out later) and asked me to follow him out.

When I got to Nigeria, he was awful to me. Imagine a flat, nobody around to support me, no phone, no radio, no television and Andrew playing golf all day, avoiding me.

He was also (I discovered) phoning his ex-wife and writing to her.

On Boxing Day, he left me all alone with no friends (and bad flu) to play golf all day.

Shortly after that I suffered a miscarriage and when we phoned home to tell people I had lost the baby he said to his mate’s wife, ‘How f***ing careless is she?’

He told me our wedding would be on a budget which was fine until I discovered he was not only paying his ex-wife’s bills but also her divorce costs.

Cut to our wedding — great day! He told me three years later he didn’t know if he wanted to be there and he was hoping I’d get the message and not turn up.

Married, we moved to Saudi, and he continued writing to his ex, though he denied it. He said: ‘You’ve no right to ask me’ and ‘You’re so ugly when you’re angry’.

We had two boys. Jeff was fine but Ian needed special care. Andrew told me I was being neglectful of him and Jeff by spending so much time at the hospital.

When the boys were young we moved to Abu Dhabi but because of Ian’s problems I took the boys back to the UK on my own to get a proper diagnosis.

Andrew actually called me a ‘lying whore’ saying ‘all I wanted to do was to leave him’. We came to Qatar because Andrew found a special school for Ian’s autism. If I’d not come with the boys he said he’d kill himself.

I don’t love him any more. I don’t want my boys to be victims of a broken home and try to keep the abuse from them, but I do want out. What would you do?

Jenny

There is no doubt what I would do in these circumstances — but then, this is not a situation I would ever have allowed to happen. It’s all too easy to dish out strong advice when you are a strong person; the issue here is how to encourage you to transform yourself into a woman with the inner strength to act on her own behalf at last.

Let us rewind this horror story to the moment when you and Andrew met in that pub. You were both damaged people. Sorely hurt by his wife, he fled abroad and sought refuge in an exploitative relationship with a women he considered his inferior.

We will never know to what extent he used her to avenge his feelings of abandonment and injury. But from all you tell me (in a much longer letter) he must have done.

You, in turn, were suffering a form of mental illness after the break-up of a relationship on which were pinned all the hopes of a person with very low self-esteem.

Any normal woman would have run away from a man who declared love and offered marriage so quickly. But you were as needy then as you are now and bizarrely decided to up sticks and follow a man you barely knew to Nigeria.

Once there, you were treated with brutal indifference — and once again, any normal woman would have got the first plane home. Instead, you actually agreed to marry this man who showed you no love whatsoever and was obviously still obsessed with his ex-wife.

Can you see how extraordinary your decision to marry him seems to everybody reading this? I can’t help wondering what happened in your distant past to turn you into such a masochist.

After all, you weren’t middle-aged and therefore desperate for a partner, were you?

It seems obvious that you are in urgent need of proper counselling. I tried to do some research for you online, but you would be in a far better place to inquire quietly if there are such services among the expat community where you live.

I see that there is a Family Consultancy Centre in Doha, Qatar (Tel: 974 487 2888) and a Psychiatric Clinic too. I do urge you to talk to people out there to find out what might be available. You tell me you need help and I agree. But I can’t give it; you need somebody on your doorstep.

You and Andrew should end this loveless sham for both your sakes. He cannot be happy if he treats you so badly and retreats into vile drunkenness.

It seems as if he is using you as a punch bag for everything that has caused him pain in his life.

But that is inexcusable — and leaves you detesting him and desperately miserable.

What effect is this having on your sons? No matter what you say, you are not protecting them and they are already ‘victims of a broken home’.

You owe it to them to make a plan of action. First, do the research I suggest.

Do you have friends and family to talk to as well? Is it possible to get one of your husband’s friends on side?

I realise how difficult it will be, but are you brave enough to talk to him one day when the boys are not there, asking him point blank if he wouldn’t like to change the life you are leading?

You say you ‘want out’. Well then, I’m afraid this is the time for you to be strong at last.

Is it OK to break a confidence to help someone?

Dear Bel

My daughter’s 17-year-old son, Mark, was recently told by his best friend, Peter, that he (Peter) was gay.

This came as a great shock to Mark, as he had never guessed this, having been close friends for many years. He came to terms with it and they are still friends.

But now Mark has discovered that Peter is in contact with a man he found on the internet (who claims to be 23) and who wants to meet up with him.

They text each other daily. And, being very concerned about his friend’s safety, Mark spoke to his own mother in confidence.

She felt that it was her duty to speak to Peter and to stress the dangers of meeting strangers from the internet.

And this she did, pointing out that she felt she had been placed in a very difficult position and that, as a responsible parent, she really ought to speak to his parents. Peter begged her not to do this, and promised to end the relationship.

However, Mark has recently found out that Peter has ignored this promise and is still texting his internet ‘friend’, planning to meet up with him as soon as it can be arranged. He even sent him £50 to top up his mobile phone — money saved from a part-time job.

Now the problem is this: does my daughter carry out her threat and tell Peter’s parents?

By doing so she will almost certainly incur the wrath of her teenage son (for betraying a confidence) and also risk destroying the much-valued friendship between her son and Peter — who, incidentally, is accompanying them on a holiday to France in July.

What should she do? She is very worried and I would be most grateful for your advice.

CONCERNED GRANDFATHER

The issue of when to betray confidences is one of hardest moral questions we have to deal with.

What do you do when you hear that your friend's husband has been seen on the town with a woman? Tell her and risk her anger? keep silent and risk being accused later of lying by ommision?

What do you do when you hear your nephew is clubbing and taking cocaine but he begs you not to tell because he has it all under control.

A 17-year-old boy who has only recently 'come out' is in a very, very vulnerable position.

He is likely to feel - perhaps correctly - that even his oldest friends(like your grandson) can't begin to understand.

That's why he will be responsive to the friendly approach of a stranger online.

But as anybody sensible will realise, this professed 23-year-old could be a predatory 40-year-old gay man whose intentions are far from friendly.

Even if he isn't, a person willing to take £50 from a schoolboy is somebody I'd be very suspicious of indeed.

Online relationships: A seemingly friendly stranger could turn out to be dangerous predator

Your daughter is quite right to be worried about this boy who has been coming to her house for so many years. I certainly would be.

You don't say whether Peter's parents, in fact, know he is gay.

This would obviously have a bearing on the case. But it seems to me that your daughter has no choice but to act.

If the friendship between the boys suffers that would be a tremendous pity - but better than peter landing in a situation where he is exploited.

Naturally I would like Mark to have a serious conversation with his friend first - and your daughter should tell him this.

The second port of call would be a school counsellor, since Peter's welfare is his school's business too.

But if he persists in contacting this dubious stranger then your daughter will have no choice but to alert his parents - no matter what the consequences.

Put it this way - if he became the victim of an abuser your daughter would never forgive herself for not blowing the whistle.

...and finally

Comforted by a word of advice

Readers often ask if I ever get follow-up from letters I use on the page. Well, on April 16 ‘Beatrice’ told how she’d been cruelly dumped by her lover — an elder in an evangelical church. Beatrice was glad of my reply:

‘The detail you replied with was comforting and truly helpful for me to come to terms with all that had happened in my life in such a short time.

‘I was worried you may have seen it from another point of view, but glad you came to my defence, which reassured me immensely.’

Two weeks later (the day after the Royal Wedding in fact) I chose a letter from ‘Barry’ who didn’t know if he was truly in love with the utterly delightful woman he was in a relationship with.

I was quite robust and counselled him not to be deceived by his ‘pesky and pernicious’ hankering after that old devil, romantic love.

Now Barry writes: ‘Thank you so much for printing my dilemma in the Mail. This was a subject that I felt I could not approach my family nor friends with.

‘I really do appreciate your words of advice, and thank you for your kind wishes for happiness.’

Sometimes readers who have not written in themselves find an answering spirit in words on the page. Such as this chap: ‘Basically I want to thank you for your words on Saturday in relation to lost love because you hit my spot.

‘Everything you said was warm, comforting and beautiful — they made so much of my anguish about my failed love make sense at last.’

Interestingly, the recent subject which aroused the most response in readers was the letter from Caroline, whose daughter had emigrated to New Zealand.

So many of you understood, because you’ve been through the same experience.

Thank you all for getting in touch, and I was able to pass your emails on for her to respond to or not as she chose. But I’m sure she would have found comfort in them, which is, after all, the point.